Welcome to Hello Bump, a podcast about what you're not expecting when you're expecting.
In this episode, hosts Jana Pittman and Grace Rouvray reveal your baby is now the size of a turnip.
At week 26, your baby can now hear and taste as Grace celebrates an impressive eight days without vomiting - while asking "what is this sensitivity I'm experiencing?!". Jana shares when iron infusions might be necessary for pregnancy fatigue and how to tell the difference between normal discharge and amniotic fluid. Plus, they discuss the joy of finding bump-flattering outfits that make you feel like yourself again.
Want to re-write the maternity fashion rules? Listen to this episode of Nothing To Wear our fashion podcast.
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CREDITS:
Hosts: Jana Pittman and Grace Rouvray
Executive Producer: Courtney Ammenhauser
Audio Producer: Thom Lion
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I am pregnant.
Welcome to Hello Bump. We're making pregnancy less overwhelming and more manageable. I'm Grace Ruvery. I'm pregnant for the first time, and I have just had eight days in a row with no vomiting. Is this forever?
It's fantastic news. This is Yanna Pittman.
I'm a former Olympian, mother of six babies and training to be an obstitucian and gynocologist.
Each episode will be holding your hand week by week through the mysterious, perplexing, and sometimes celebratory miracle that is pregnancy. Week twenty six. How big is the baby this week?
Pers, I just want to celebrate. That's amazing, Thank you, Sorry, that's excellent.
I mean twenty six weeks in.
Yeah, it's a lot to have gone through. Yes, it's just honor that. That's huge anyhow, But I'll take it.
We're stoked.
Absolutely, your baby at twenty six weeks is the size of a turnip.
I thought maybe a fancy bottle of sparkling water.
Oh that is a little more fancy. I like it. A bandicoot was the animal theme. It was really hard to find one this week.
Yes, I love that. And how long are they?
Thirty six centimeters roughly and now weighing between six hundred and eighty and nine hundred grams. This is whether variation is really going to start kicking in.
What does that mean?
It basically means that the baby's size will be a little bit dependent on you and your partner.
So we call that constitutional growth.
So if you're really tall and you know, you're likely to have a tall baby and a bigger baby. If you're petit, you're not likely to grow a ninety eight centile baby.
Is whether your partner has a big head? Does that come into it at this point?
Look, some genetics do play in mind, but you got to remember that the baby has very soft bones in its brain and the Fontenelle's crossover to allow that. So my midwife, who I love, has always said, your body will make a baby that's suited for you. So you know it's cardious, isn't it?
Now?
Obviously there's reasons like GDM, which you should have been tested for by now twenty eight weeks that means sometimes babies can be bigger if the diabetes is unconstroy roll. But if you've got a really low risk ongoing normal pregnancy, the chances are your baby's size is going to fit you beautifully great.
I do look at my partner's head and go, oh, dear God, Yes, but my body knows what it's doing. It does as it does, it does, And what else are they developing?
So your little one can now suck, see here and taste, which I think is a big milestone. That's a lot of sensory changes. And other boys testicles are now fully descended, so they should if they come now have little balls outside of their body.
And if they are born premature, are you waiting for them to drop?
If they're born twenty five twin like, we do that in an exam. Afterwards we check for testicular development and often they won't be there. They look they start around twenty six weeks, so you might have a baby that's had them earlier, but by twenty eight weeks they should be fully descended.
Don't get me wrong.
Some little boys are born without that, so you will actually even a full term little boy may not have a testicle that might have one, or they might be quite higher, but it is something the pediatrician will check at birth.
What what's happening to me and what's happening to us?
You're bigger, you're hungrier.
Yes, you might have started noticing that abdominal separation a little bit more and you might be finding it now. It's hard to sit up now. I think that's a really important conversation. Is the amount of women I see reef themselves up, you know, big, big sit up.
It's really bad for your abdominant abdomen.
There's some noises that are happening from the body when I do sit up, or if I drop something on the ground, Yeah, to pick it up exactly, Yeah.
I hear.
So we want to roll over or if you're on the ground, if you're picking up something off the floor, get down onto your hands and knees, pick it up, and then get back up and stand. So, particularly the sitting up though, you guys want to roll over to your left side and then use your arm to push yourself up. Starting that now before your baby gets really big, we'll really try and protect those abdominal muscles down the track.
Is this normal normal? So? Is this normal I'm getting quite tired, like quite fatigued, like eyes. It's that bone tired where you can't necessarily go and have a nap, but your body just starts to feel tired, as well as being a bit more sensitive to heat and needing more airflow in my life.
This normal look, I mean, the fatigue can happen to anybody at any point. Your body's going through a remarkable change of growing your baby. So are you still working full time? Some people are, some people aren't. Are you up all night with nausea? Are you getting up to peel all night? There's lots of factors that will come into the fatigue. Time to check that iron again. So you're approaching that sort of twenty eight week mark, so you know, ideally we do that test in the early third dromester, so around the twenty eight weeks. But if you're feeling that fatigue, it's time to just get it rechecked, because even if you're taking oral iron, you might find it's not enough, and so that might be a discussion. You need to have the hot stuff or you vas it. I like your vessels, you're trying to pump blood around. You've got that extra volume.
Oh yes, the more blood.
Yeah, blood, while we were back to that again, and it's also really hard. Depending on the season, you have more blood flow to your sweat gland, so you will sweat more. So you might find you're like, I'm wetter than I used to be into my arm and my armpits in between my breasts and things. It's again quite common in pregnancy. It's not a concern. You might have ever find you sweat smells more differently as well because you're still detoxing and everything through your skin. So it's just something to be aware of and don't let your body overheat. So again it comes back to hydration, getting yourself in a cool room, using cool compresses of wet cold towels at night if you need it. Otherwise you might end up being quite itchy and uncomfortable with dry skin as well. So it's an interesting chapter but definitely common.
When you talk about the iron infusion, is that something you can request from your doctor or do they have to look at your results and decide that you're eligible for that.
It's a little bit of both.
If you're in a public health system, we need a criteria where the iron the ferretin level is under thirty and the hemoglobin has to be under one hundred and ten. So that's your public free looked in.
Can you say those stats again?
Sorry?
Yeah, see your Ferreton level, your FB needs to be under thirty for most of the time, it'll be like eight or nine or tens is something lower. And your hemoglobin, that oxygen carrying molecule has to be under one hundred and ten. Okay, so they're your textbook standards, but don't get me wrong. For example, you've got a hemoglobin of one hundred and your ferreten's thirty two. You might find some obstetrician will say, look, I think it's probably better year twenty six weeks pregnant.
It's only going to be it worse.
But I think the caveat there is that most of us would prefer you to have it within six weeks or seven weeks of birth. So at twenty six weeks you've got a long way to go, And what we're really preparing for you is, yes, they're fatigue now, but it's also that when you lose that blood at birth, we want you to be able to recoup in the postpart and period, So ideally we pop you in orals. Now increase the oral intake of dietary iron and also supplementary iron. Recheck you your results again at thirty four to thirty six weeks, and if it's low, then we then offer you the iron infusion. And yes, if your borderline and you want to have it, of course there's private clinics that'll allow you to pay for it, but it just won't be free.
What are some things that we can do at twenty six weeks on our checklist?
I think you're back to getting you are facial at this point.
Oh, so let's go for something nice to do other than what you need to do, just little self care things at this point, particularly when you are feeling tired, I think it's just really important to start. You know, you're still probably trying to get on with your daily activities, but time to reapply some time for yourself.
Your red flags, guys, I think now it's your red flags.
We're going to have to mention them every episode because we need to make sure we don't miss someone baby's movements, bleeding, funny discharge, contractions, pain. Now is the time you need to watch your vaginal loss because waters can be tricky. It's not a big gush like you see on the movie. So if you find you have a little leak of weird continuous discharge, put a pad on, and if it's continuous and watery throughout the day, you actually need to go into triple check that you've still got intact membranes. So most of the time it's we I can say I've sent a lot of ladies home who've feed themselves. That's okay, but.
We need to make sure that's what it is.
Will you know in terms of the consistency, will it be different too, because we've said discharge does change, does the consistency of leaking?
Yeah, it's not only more watery, so it's more like urine. So the more common thing is increase discharge you find go home. We do a special little test, but in most hospitals, rural or tertiary hospitals will do a little test. It's something called like an act and prom or something like that that'll actually look at whether or an amney sure if it's actually your amniotic fluid or not, because it looks for the proteins in the amniotic fluid that are not normally in the vagina, and it can tell you whether it is flued or not. We get false positives when there's too much discharge, though, so you might find you had a false positive two three days later, like go home, you don't have it and you're like, what what hanging on?
I'm so confused.
But it's normally watery, and look, it's uncommon. Again at twenty six weeks, it's still it's more common women break there when brain's thirty four, thirty five, thirty eight weeks. But it's just again when we're talking red flags, these are the four or five things that you need to go no, no, no, sweet.
So my toolkit this week is to buy bump flattering out fits for fun, fun, for fun, just because there's the floaty stage of pregnancy where it does look like you've just had a big lunch, so you're probably covering it. But now the bump could be looking a bit more like gorgeous. Yeah, you're in the attractive stage of pregnancy. You look really cute. The maternity photo shoot is not something I'm interested.
In, really, Oh, I do every one of my pregnancies.
I don't know. I'm just imagining myself in some type of field, wrapped in a sheet, and I'm like I'm.
Fine.
I mean I think I would like to look like maybe fashionable and beholding my bump, but also trying to find stuff that fits your style beforehand. For example, today, I always love a jumpsuit because they make me feel like me, and my previous jumpsuits weren't fitting me. But then I found something it was a chic and it comes in at my waist that makes me feel like I still have a waist, but then it comes over my bump. So there's some pregnancy maternity brands that do really wonderful things for bumps. But then there are trying to find things but just in a bigger size that still make you feel fashionable and make you feel like yourself, which has been really helpful for me this week. What are the maternity brands that you know of, Well.
I mean my favorite is actually Ripe Maternity, So I bought probably three quarters of my wardrobe through them. Really lovely, stylish work clothes, gym clothes, fitness, like everything you can think of. Taja Target does a really good maternity ryn. So there's got lots of yeah, lots of really good stuff there. Look, it depends if you're into secondhand stuff. I mean also depends how many pregnancies you plan to have. But if you wan't done Facebook marketplace like people do where you have really really expensive maternity stuff where at once and then they're not get.
Rid of it them.
Yeah, so a bit like Baby close at the end and baby We're in general, prams and whatnot. It's not a bad place to turn if you're on a bit of a budget.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Hello Bump. We have so many episodes of this series filled with tips and stories from women and experts who've been through it all before.
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This episode was produced by Courtney Ammenhauser with audio production by Tom Lyon.
We'll catch you next time.
This episode of Hello Bump was made in partnership with Huggies. Bye Bye,